Ping.   Tap. Tap. Taptap. Taptaptapap.   Bang. Bang.   Ping.   Tap.   Tap. Taptap. Taptaptapap.   Bang. Bang.

Noise to most, but to Sarneed it was beautiful music.   An enchantment.   The music of the metal, the abrasion made by the stroke of elements, one against the other, this was the core of his famous pieces of furniture; this is what made his divans divine, his chairs churlish and his benches beatific.   Now his podiums, the model of pulchritude.   But all agreed, though the little bits of Sarneed that they purchased or bartered for and brought into their homes looked wonderful, the man himself was not a work well-honed.  

It was not unusual to pass Sarneed's workshop and hear him having an argument with a particular stingy log of ebony or debating Pythagorus' theories with his ball peen hammer.   In fact, it was said that it was at these moments that the real aficionados of his work would hover like vultures over a carcass, awaiting the miraculous piece that was destined to emerge.   Today was not one of those days, yet. So Sarneed gracefully went about the art of hewing noise, the alchemy of craftsmanship.

Outside in his courtyard, Sarneed had inadvertently yet purposefully began a shrine to the great trees and shrubs that had figured prominently in his work.   A wondrous array of blooming branches and succulent barks greeted those who entered the gates of his spacious compound, for though considered daft, he was also considered a brilliant businessman and had been lured into no less than three marriages, all childless, each wife silently awaiting consummation.   Lemons, oranges and an assortment of apples haphazardly appeared, if one could not figure the song which was the composition of the garden.   Olives, both green and black, cherry and persimmon, cypress and teak all had a place in the heart of Sarneed's empire.   He had tried in vain to get a sapling that smelled like a rose to grow--a gift from a ship captain who had traveled with the Tattooed Giants from the Smoking Islands out to the Hala, dormant verdant lands which had the widest river he had ever seen in all of his fantastic voyages.   Given the lack of humidity, Sarneed had to settle instead for a ring of rose bushes which crept along the walkways and gates, a furious burst of color and aroma.

Wiping the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his burka(?), a troubadour stopped as he entered Kadesh, hearing the oddest melody he had ever heard.   Before he knew what had happened, he had begun to compose lyrics and was working on the harmony to this strange and mystical music.   Just back from Athens, it was wonderful to be among people who new the value of creation, not just entertainment.   The troubadour walked along to the pings and taps that issued from Sarneed's workshop as they echoed off the hillside, oblivious to their lowly point of origin.   His mandolin seemed determined to be reunited with long lost family and tugged him closer and closer to the compound of our dear wood worker.

Delirious, Kira could not believe her fate had brought her so close to her hearts desire only to leave her stuck in a pickle barrel of not-quite.   Her husband, though handsome, kind and fabulously wealthy, did not have the slightest interest in the rapture of human to human contact.   "I prefer to work with the Primaries,"   he had told her, reminding her that the body is too murky a composition--water, bones, hair, blood--what could be hewn from that other than more confusion?   No, her silly Sarneed had it in his mind that his was a calling to a higher, more perfect ordering of things; an acolyte of the Five Elements.   How she burned with envy every time a new shipment of wood and fabric would come in.   She had to turn her head to hide the fire in her eyes as Sarneed cooed and caressed each piece, asking gingerly its name, promising to deliver it to the purpose for which it was destined.   And her?   Was she not destined to be a lover, a mother, a wife, a cunning market woman? So ashamed of her empty lap was she that she never ever bothered to go out and purchase a market stall with the money Sarneed had given her expressly for that purpose.   Five years, and nothing more than a stroke of the hand, and two more wives suffering the same fate as she.   Worst of all, he did not even notice that none of them, not a one, ever left the compound.

Shruh.   Shruh.   Eshruhu. Eshruhu .   This was his favorite part, though the whittling also was a most sublime experience.   Stroking the piece of furniture part, no, brushing it, caressing it, elevating it until the roughness of indecisiveness gave way to the lusciousness of purpose.   A leg.   A head rest.   A clawed foot.   A winging back.   A swelling settee.   Parts. Pieces in the puzzle of his rapture, co-conspirators in his rage against the ordinary.   Sarneed paused, he thought he had heard a music, a foreign sound, emitting from the wood.   It was nothing.   He returned to his blessed labor, certain that he had heard the correct melody when he first began working this piece of apple wood.

Thwack !   How dare he!   Thwack !   How could he bring me such humiliation!   Mehri angrily hacked apart a jack fruit, tormented by the news that her younger sister had just given birth to a son.   She was a disgrace.   Everyone believed that Sarneed was cursed.   That he had made great marriages, but neither of his two wives had been able to bear him a son, which was the reason a third wife, a mysterious barbarian, had been given to him as a gift of reconciliation last year by her own family, lest he sue them for the return of the dowry.   Now this injury!   Little did anyone know that the problem was Sarneed, or more precisely, Sarneed's absence from the conjugal bed, which had created the house full of creations, none of which could breath.   Suddenly Mehri's focus turned to the very table upon which she worked.   Her rough handling of the jack fruit had created new scores, deep with juice, like the bile that rose to her lips.   Every time she had one thought of destroying one of Sarneed's cherished creations, she fell ill in this manner.   Today, however, it went quickly as the stench of her husband's sweat wafted from beneath the finish, mingling with the delicate syrup of the jack fruit.   Looking first to her left, then her right, she bent over and licked the wounded table, savoring the possibility of it turning into the flesh of which it smelled.   Bolting upright, she decided that she needed to polish.

Each leg of the table had an array of bruised and glossy citrus fruits strewn about its foot.   An urn of baking oil had been knocked over underneath the massive table, the clove, coriander and cardamom pods lying there, languid, in the deep green pool.   A burka was heaped on the floor, by the hearth.   Next to it, was a foot.   A twitching foot.   Following the foot to the ankle, the leg, the crumpled white shift, a tuft of hair, a handful of limes, a black shock of hair, greasy with the aromatic oil, Anajalli was stunned to see her co-wife/mistress writhing against the sculpted piece of wood, licking and kissing it with abandonment.   She dropped the eggs she had been holding.   Can't you see that the table needs polishing?!   Go away!   Tearing out of the kitchen as fast as she could, Anajalli bumped into her senior wife, who had an axe in her hand.

A journey of 40 days and 40 nights.

How many had such delights

As a fruit with a thousand seeds

All of which bleed

The blessings of sweet and slow

So to and fro I go

In search of the bodies that know

That remember the ebb and flow

Of fluids both salty and sweet

And the bounty which did follow.

Sarneed felt naked.   He quickly let loose the lathe, dropping the couch arm on which he had been working.   Who dares sing such things?   Out loud no less.   The troubadour had entered the courtyard, and unaccustomed to its size and verdant population, assumed it a public park and got on to the business of refining the drivel that had gushed forth from him when he first encountered Sarneed's singing furniture.   The door swung wide open into Sarneed's workshop.   Kira stood there with the axe in hand, first glaring into her husband's face, then quickly surveying the shop to see if he had finally taken on an apprentice as he had promised 3 years ago.   He had not.   She began to smirk wickedly, then her eyes glanced down.

The sunlight bounced off the ebony of Anajalli's shoulder as she dashed into the courtyard to gather her wits.   Though he did not treat her like a slave, to the contrary, her owner had made it very clear that she was his wife and had set about having her instructed in the language and customs of Kadesh, he had done no more than stroke her arm in amazement, muttering something that she now believes meant, "my precious wood, " or something disturbing like that.   How lucky she was!   To be as cherished and saintly as one of her master's pieces of furniture.   She traipsed around the compound, sanctified, safe from marauders, soldiers and allegedly pious traveling merchants.   Anajalli had known no such freedom in her entire life, since she was born to a large family in Bamako whose patriarch had a penchant from gambling.   She had been part of a financial settlement.   Half dead in a desert, which one, she wasn't sure, she had been discovered by a family of traders on their way home early because of the wars surrounding their old routes. Mehri's older brother had soiled himself as he noticed first her exquisite beauty, and second her shallow breath then finally the deep gashes like lattice across her back.   He had touched a slave.   To prevent a potential calamity upon their return, the father and his sons decided that they would give her as a gift to their eldest sister's husband, since she had had the rudeness not to bear him any sons, or girls for that matter.   Anajalli was now free, as long as she remained within the marvelous, now suddenly terrifying world of the tree carver.   Who is that singing?

The troubadour paused for a moment, trying to decipher exactly what his story was trying to do, when he noticed that his mandolin seemed to be turning red.   A woman screamed from inside the building behind him.   Leaping to his feet, our bardic friend sought cover, since normally the scoundrel is the one foreign born, the one there to lease himself and his song.

Anajalli jumped and ran towards the workshop, thoughts of auction blocks racing through her dread locked head.   She grabbed the iron rod that held the gateway open, murderous.

"Ow!"   Mehri had worked up such a lather that she had not noticed that had left tooth marks which were now producing splinters. She had fallen into the sulliness of the troubadour's song, innately recognizing it as a duet with her husband's labors out in his workshop.   The sanding of the furniture blended harmoniously with the smell of her witchy work under the table and the crass, yet enigmatic words of the song.   Upon hearing the blood curdling scream, however, our self-loving adventuress leapt to her feet, dashing towards the door, only to slip and fall in her own handiwork.   By the time she arrived to the workshop, it was completely silent.   No one noticed her half nakedness.

Kira's eyes had fallen on the piece of furniture that was helplessly on the floor.   Sarneed never left any fragments on the floor.   Indeed, they had their own special furniture that he had designed "that allows them to relax," he had said.   Odder yet, the mishandled piece seemed to be crying.   Crying blood.   Kira faintly remembered a humming sound emanating from the wood.   It seemed to make the wood wiggle like a grub.   And there was a song, a filthy song that made her wrath even more succinct, but the shock of the crying, bleeding, wiggling wooden arm got the best of her.   As she was fading to black, she heard Anajalli give one of her heathen yells as she leapt through the workshop window, brandishing the iron rod.

The troubadour held onto the branch with all of his might, but with his pack of supplies and instruments, the tree could not offer him refuge any longer, and deposited him through the workshop window, where he stopped the warrior advances of Anajalli.   Great Isis!   There's a naked woman standing in the doorway, he thought to himself, as Anajalli turned the rod against him.

For his part, Sarneed was wet with sweat.   A mixture of fear and anticipation surged through him.   Kira wanted to work with him!   His prayers had been answered.   She had finally begun to accept his gifts and now wanted to share in the joys of his labors.   When he realized that perhaps that was not her intent, it was too late.   A very perceptible odor of fruit had begun to leak from his dropped piece of furniture.   He wanted to bend down and pick it up, but it occurred to him that his neck would be bare at that moment.   He had made her such a beautiful bed.   Why wasn't that enough?   He was there every night.   All she had to do was listen to the rhythm of the wood breathing in the full moon air, smell the special delicate varnish he had used, just for her.   In fact, each of his beloved wives had their own special bed, their own special amalgamation of herbs and resins painted delicately upon the wood of his desire.   By the time he managed to look down, he stared in disbelief, then finally smiled a smile of defeat.

"I was wrong, you are not apple.   Your touch was so unusual, your vibration so delightful, I desired you before I comprehended your destiny.   (What agony have I purchased?)"

The wood, now covered in bloody juice sprouted intense thickets of roots, shooting straight into the foundation and out to the outer wall, narrowly missing Sarneed.   Upward, the tree rose, a huge maiden, hair of fiery green leaves and orange hot blossoms.   This household has called me, she said, with the help of the sounds from my homeland.   I come to release.   I come to create.   I come to pour.   At that, her petals dropped and the most round and red fruits appeared.   Sensing the magnitude of the situation and his role in it, the troubadour began to sing his song, gesturing for Sarneed to pick up his needle and work some stitching on a pillow slip.

A journey of 40 days and 40 nights.

How many had such delights

As a fruit with a thousand seeds

All of which bleed

The blessings of sweet and slow

So to and fro I go

In search of the bodies that know

That remember the ebb and flow

Of fluids both salty and sweet

And the bounty which did follow.

As the two men worked, the fruit began to ripen and drop from the tree;   Some popped open, splattering a red so true to blood that all swooned at first sight.   It was Mehri who discovered its edible qualities.   It's a bleeding apple!

No, said Anajalli, tasting the fruit, it is Fruited Fire Flower.   Kira had to have a taste too.   The lady of the tree said, "Kira. pick one and open it."   As she did so, she shrieked in delight as she noticed herself reflected in each tiny globe of juice.   All gathered round, awestruck.   The tree laughed and swayed to the memory of music, now silenced by their dropped jaws and salivating tongues.

Neighbors were first to notice that there was no hammering or muttering coming from Sarneed's compound.   Merchants would jump off ship and travel fast, pushing their camels hard, to make it in time to buy anything from the hands of the famous Sarneed, only to find the workshop in slight disarray, with a mighty tree growing from its innards.

No one ever saw them leave.   Almost seven moons had passed.   A rumor began to spread that in a rage against his curse, Sarneed had killed all of his wives and then himself.   Until one day, they heard the sound of hammering and sawing it lasted for at least two moon cycles.   Still, the shop did not open.   On the following full moon, however, people could hear quite clearly the sound of several babies crying, and two drunken men singing the praises of a bleeding fruit tree.

(c) Anna Beatrice Scott 2002

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